My Top 10 Favorite Video Games (5-1)
Number 5: The Legend of Zelda – Majora's Mask (GameCube) Yes, I know that the game was originally on the N64, but we're going with the versions that I played. And the one that I played was the version in the Zelda Collector's edition for the GameCube. It's also how I played Ocarina of Time and Zelda II for the first time. As for this game, the reasons that I like it are all of the typical ones—the darker tone, the groundhog day mechanic, deeper characters, outstanding level design, and the Great Bay Temple isn't that hard at all. Seriously. When you get into the main room, swim into the upper area and get the key, return to the main room and swim to the lower area and get the ice arrows. Use them in the upper area to get the boss key, and then reverse the flow of water. It should be intuitive from that point onward. I suppose I should talk about why the other Zelda games aren't my favorite. Keep in mind that The Legend of Zelda is my favorite video game series, ever. The only ones I didn't like were the Oracle games. They felt too much like a rehash of Link's Awakening without providing any real new context like Majora's Mask does to Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess isn't my favorite game in the series because it didn't want to be a Zelda game. It wanted to be Shadow of the Colossus, and Zelda games are not good at being Shadow of the Colossus. They're good at being Zelda games. While A Link to the Past has my favorite asthetic of all of the games, if you know what you're doing, the game is remarkably short. Same for A Link Between Worlds. And Wind Waker might actually have been might favorite with its massive world... if it didn't take three hours to open up to you. I've heard this term before, a "start-to-slime ratio." Basically, how long does it take for a video game to open up to you? In the first game, which has the best start-to-slime ratio, you go in the cave and get your sword. Wind Waker doesn't open up to you until after the second dungeon. Now don't get me wrong. I really do love Wind Waker. It's still in my top 5 Zelda games, but that's just the reason it isn't number one. As for Ocarina of Time? I can't say much beyond, I just like Majora's Mask better. I suppose helping this game get on my list here is the fact that this game is the freshest in my mind. I mean, I'm doing a playthrough of the 3DS remake. How does it stack up to the original? It's much more accessable if you've never played the original game. If you haven't played the N64 or gamecube version, get the 3DS version. I like the updated saving system. I mean, I wish you could save anywhere like you could in Ocarina of Time, but it's better than the original. I'm surprised they didn't fix the Bomb Mask shield glitch in the new version. I don't like the stupid fishing hole they tacked on. I mean, I wouldn't mind it, but I wish the minigames gave me 50 rupees instead of a pass to the fishing hole that I'll never use. I actually find the stream-lined Bomber's Notebook a lot harder to navigate. And then there's the Zora swimming controls. This is the kind of change that fits the definition of "the first one you use is going to be your favorite." In the original game, you could swim exceedingly fast as a Zora. In the new version you swim rather slow unless you hold down the R trigger, which uses magic energy. In fact, I used Chateu Romani to get through the Great bay Temple here. Areas that require speed like the Beaver Race throw magic power at you to compensate. If you've played the original, you're going to feel extremely sluggish. Not helping is the fact, that the inverted song of time actually doesn't seem to slow down time as much as in the original. If you played this one first and went back to play the original however, you'd probably spend most of your time as a zora crashing into walls. Personally, I don't like the change, but I can at least see where they're coming from. I'm actually surprised they got away with an E 10 rating. I thought for sure that if they remade this game today, they'd get at least a T (or higher rating). It's not just the fact that a bad guy is destroying the world, it's the fact of how the pain and suffering and fear is conveyed. Then again, games aren't exactly rated by someone doing a playthrough. The company sends in a bunch of notes to the ESRB of anything that might be objectionable and they make their decision. And there are a lot of things that are easy to miss, even some of my favorite parts of this game. To get the most of this game, you try talking to everyone as much as possible, after every little trigger. Try saving Romani from the alien ghosts and return to the ranch on the third day and talk to them. You can intercept a conversation in the barn. The world is about to be destroyed and Cremia knows it. As such, she's given Romani her own Romani mask and Chateu Romani, this game's analog for alcohol, saying that she sees her as an adult. And considering that alcohol dulls the senses, more specifically pain... My other favorite moments are the ones that you've heard before. Although one that doesn't get nearly enough attention is Pamela and her father. Maybe it's because it's small and gets overshadowed by the Stone Tower Temple (which is the best Zelda dungeon ever), but it really speaks to me. Then there's Anju and Kafei's side quest. With the Sun Mask gauntlet, I am very greateful for the updated save system because in the original you were prone to fucking it up, and that kind of dillutes the power of this. I mean, it's not entirely devoid of tedium—you have to do a lot of the side quest twice to get everything (although Madam Doutour's bottle can actually be your first bottle in the game), and there's Tatl's line "even though their lovers, they look like mother and child." Yes Tatl, I saw that episode of SVU too, thank you for trying to ruin this moment. What I actually like about this story though, is how it's integrated in the gameplay. Because it was originally tedious, the designers knew that if you were going to do this you were doing it for 100% completion... and that allowed them to ensure it would be tragic. That is something incredibly hard to do in a groundhog day scenario. For completing this quest, you get the Couple's Mask. It only gives you one heart piece in the game, but if you want one-hundred percent completion it forces you to reset. Depending on how the time travel works, everyone might actually be dying in every time line that you jump out of. Technically the game is beatable in 6 in-game days (on the N64 at least), but chances are you're going to need to reset a couple of times at least. It may seem like a punch to the emotions, but I think that it's earned here. They didn't alter the rules of the story or game to shoehorn in tragedy and no character in perfect. Like I said though, if you know where to look though, many characters of the game are just a deep. It's amazing what you can learn about someone in just three days—helping is the fact that on day one is how they typically act and on day three is how they act when brought to the brink. Number 4: To the Moon (PC) Spoiler alert. Okay. I can't talk about this game without spoiling something. If we were talking about story alone, this game would be number one. The only thing holding it back is that there's not much game here. In fact the "worst" parts of it, are when To the Moon feels the need to remind you that it's a game, with the flipping tile puzzles, some hard-to-see memory links, and that obsticle course at the end. They don't hold it back in anyway because this game has some of the highest heights I've seen in any game. For some reason, I feel myself drawn to tragedy. The first half of my list was dedicated to games that I just like to play, but this half is for games that have touched me deeply. And they almost always do it in the way of sadness. I suppose that's because realistic sadness is the best conveyor that someone or something is human. I mean, crying is often seen as a sign of weakness while laughter isn't. And if someone never cries they are seen or feel as if they above human. Sadness isn't the strongest pure emotion by any sense, but it's by far the most resonant. The deepness of life often generates either strong happiness or strong sadness, and this game shows that perfectly. Someone should tell David Cage that this is how you do non-linear storytelling. The intention of the writer is almost always to hide a revelation, yes, but doing it with absolutely no narrative reason is... well, it's cheating. I can retell the story of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with chapters in a random order, but it's not going to be as good, and it will be far less cohesive. To the Moon's storytelling seems to take inspiration from the movie Momento, in which its story is told backwards. There's a reason for that. There are two scientists (Niel and Eva) whose job is to help old people fulfil a dying request. What they do is go through someone's memories and implant new desires to change them and essentially give people false memories to meet their dying requests. The basis of the story is a man named Johnny. His desire is to go to the moon, only he doesn't know why. Despite being in Johnny's own head, the story really isn't about him. The story is about his late wife River. You see, this game has the best and most accurate portrayal of Asperger's Syndrome that I've ever seen. Possibly the best that exists. In fact, there are two characters with Asperger's Syndrome. River and her friend Isabelle. From a narrative purpose, Isabelle is there to stop this from being a wishy-washy "I want to be normal" story. River does "want to be normal," but Isabelle has trained herself to overcome her disability and appear as normal, but almost seems to regret it, as she's lost her true self in the process. Even with all of this, Asperger's Syndrome isn't so much the focal point of the game, but the catalyst. One of the hallmarks of Asperger's Syndrome is trouble to communicate. Speaking as someone with Asperger's Syndrome I'd frequently do (seemingly to me) odd or weird things in order to make people ask specific questions because I didn't have the ability to start a conversation, or just blatantly tell them why I was doing that. River is the same way. In her later years, she constantly makes paper origami rabbits in order to remind Johnny of a special memory. Unfortunately Johnny physically can't do it, because of another unrelated tragedy that surprisingly brings the game together. When you figure out the final revelation, it is possibly one of the saddest or most shocking moments in the entire game. At this point in the story, you're not supposed to like Johnny. You learn that the reason he first went out with River is because she was weird and he wanted to stand out. And I like the way they do this. It wouldn't be so much of a deal. I mean, at this point he's a teenager trying to find himself. People do all kinds of stupid and selfish things when they're that age. Here's the thing though, everything before that moment in the game was built on that one moment and seemed rather genuine. It puts everything in a new context. Then the revelation puts it in another new context. And then the revelation after that puts it in yet another new context. Picking a favorite moment of this game or its story is nigh impossible. The obvious choice would be the ending, but as it's said in-game "the ending is just as important as all moments leading up to it." I like the game for what it does. It brings awareness to something without being preachy. It tells romance without being shallow. It's sad without being melodramatic. It's funny without being corny. It has a twist ending without under-handedly hiding information. Still waiting for that sequel though. Number 3: Beyond Good & Evil (Gamecube) Honestly, if there's any reason that I don't like Wind Waker has much as I should, it would probably be this game. I mean, this game seems inspired by the outrage of Wind Waker's cartoony asthetics. Chances are though, if you enjoyed the Wind Waker you're going to like this game. A lot. Let me put it in perspective. For a lot of this game, you ride around in a small boat that can leap off of the water's surface. I'm probably exaggerating a little, since Beyond Good & Evil is a much different game. When it comes to underrated games of the sixth generation that didn't sell well but were the best games in their genre and demanded a sequel, not only because of their outstanding franchise material, but because their stories end on a cliffhanger, you're probably thinking Psychonauts or this game. Probably Psychonauts though, even though I personally like this game a lot better. Though it's probably my biases. I mean, I just compared it to Zelda, my favorite game series of all time. Actually no. Do you know what I hate in video games? Stealth missions in non-stealth games. I've always hated them since Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, and this game jumps from an action-adventure game to a stealth game halfway through the game. And do you know what? I absolutely adore this game. I mean, it probably could be video gaming's answer to Star Wars—an incredibly imaginative science fiction master piece. And for the most part, the game takes place on one town on one planet, but the world is so fully realized that it seems bigger than it actually is. Helping is one of the game's main mechanics. You see, Jade, the character you play as, is a photographer. And her current job is to take pictures of the various fauna of Hillys (the town she lives in). Think of it of Wind Waker's gallery side quest, except sort of mandatory, and it actually pays you for it. That's not the only gameplay mechanic though. There's combat, and as I mentioned before, stealth. There's also minigames. The minigames are so much fun that I would actually pay for a compilation of them. There's one that's kind of like air hockey, but hard to explain. And there are your boat races, chasing down bad guys, things like that. Also, the boat race minigame music is amazing. I could describe it as Spanish-gibberish yelling, but that wouldn't do it justice. Just look it up for yourself. Once again, think of it like how minigames are integrated into a Zelda game. In those you complete a minigame you get a heart piece. In this game, you complete a minigame and you get a pearl. These pearls give you upgrades for your boat, and yes they are kind of mandatory. I never ran into a situation where I didn't have enough pearls to progress, but I do know that that's a turn-off for some. This game is actually heavily story-oriented, and it's about a conspiracy. Like most conspiracy stories I can't tell you any details without heavily spoiling it. If Indigo Prophecy is why I don't like conspiracy stories when they're done wrong, this taught me that I don't like them much when they're done right. Ignoring the cliffhanger ending, the conspiracy feels very... limiting. Hillys is a beautiful and immersive place, but being on the wrong side of this conspiracy makes me feel jaded from its people. To me, it feels like it sacrifices world for the sake of plot. Luckily, I love the characters so much that I can enjoy the story—the ones that make an impact on the plot. In a conspiracy story, you're either relevent to the plot or a mindless drone being controlled by the conspiracy or a mindless drone fighting the conspiracy, and I don't like that. Ignoring the genre/type of the story though, I really like this one. It has some amazing moments, like the infamous lighthouse scene. For some reason, lighthouses in video games seem to be the central point of sad moments. It's like having a mentor in a movie. At some point, something bad is going to happen to them. It's also like having a horse with the letter A in your story. I mean there's Artex from the Never-ending story, there's Argo from Shadow of the Colossus, probably another horse beginning with A that I can't think of right now. The strength of Beyond Good & Evil's story comes from its characters. The main three are Jade, Pey'j, and Double H. As for Pey'j, you would be surprised how much you could feel emotions for a strange pig-man-thing. He could have easily been a walking joke, but they made a dignified character out of him. Jade to me, felt largely like a player analog, kind of like Link (yes, I'll cool it with the Zelda comparisons. For this entry). Then there's Double H. He's introduced actually kind of late into the story. Remember my Elf Bowling review? For some strange reason this game is able to do so many things that I hate, and still make me love it. Double H is my favorite character in the game, and he starts out as a meat-headed law man who randomly spouts non-sequitors about his training. One of them is D.B.U.T.T.: Don't Break Up the Team, and if you've played the game, where that phrase actually finds its context is my favorite moment in the game. Like I said, it seems like Jade is supposed to be an analog for the player. At first you see the guy as weird and kind of awkward, but you slowly come to like him. And if what I hear is correct, Ubisoft is actually finally making a sequel to this game. Number 2: Terranigma (SNES) I normally describe this game as the gameplay of A Link to the Past married to the beautiful story of a Final Fantasy game. It is one of the most perfect games that I have ever played. And keep in mind, I didn't grow up with this game. Obviously. It was released pretty much everywhere except North America. So, it's aged perfectly. The combat is fun, intuitive, and fair. I didn't find any of the puzzles archiac, and the story is perfect for a JRPG—the right amount of silliness and the right amount of seriousness. I find it strange that it's still this underrated. I mean, other great games that were ignored at the time like EarthBound or Zombies Ate My Neighbors seem to have found their way back into prominence over the years. But this one? There isn't much you can find. There's 16-Bit Gem's review on this, but that's about it. So how did I find out about it? Simple... I grew up with Soul Blazer. When I beat it, I decided to look for the sequel. I thought its sequel was Skyblazer. Skyblazer is a fine game, but it's not Soul Blazer's sequel. After some research I learned about the rest of the Gaia trilogy. I haven't played Illusion of Gaia yet because that one's actually feasible to buy. Emulators and all of that are kind of ambiguous on the legal side, and there are two things that factor into it for me—was it ever released in my region (in English), and is anyone still making money off of this game? No one is making money off of Terranigma. It's not being sold on any virtual consoles and it's very unlikely for that to happen. To play Terranigma, I'd need a PAL copy of the game, and a European Super Nintendo. Possibly, even a European television set. I mean, if you're using emulators for games that currently can be bought by the developers, like all of those SEGA games on steam right now, yeah that's piracy. But for something like this? Quintet, the developer, doesn't even exist anymore (strange, after five games, they disappear off of the face of the earth). I'm trying to justify this to you as much as possible, because I do want you to try this game out. This is definitely a must-play. The game is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter you essentially plunge the continents out of the ocean. Each time you do you get a cutscene of a beautiful vista that looks like they belong on the playstation. The amount of detail put into this game is astounding, and yes, it does take place in the real world. The second chapter of the game involves you bringing flora and fauna to life and you can talk to pretty much everything, like you could in Soul Blazer. One very memorable scene is in a very snowy region. You're with two goats when you get trapped in a cave in. One of those two goats die, and since the other goat can't leave she cannabalises her husband. Yes, this is a licensed Nintendo game, and I can say that it is the best game ever made with goat cannabilism in it. It's not like these moments are played for laughs. They're portrayed just as they should. I mean, the story starts getting tearjerking in the first chapter. I posted an image of one of my favorite moments a little bit back. Basically the main character Ark's girlfriend Ellie wants to send him off with a smile, but can't do so, so she refuses to see him at all. In the third chapter you help humans rise to prominence and can no longer talk to your animal friends, seen as enemies by those you've once helped. As you might have imagined, the game has a heavy leaning towards themes of creation, resurrection, and destruction and those themes play heavily into the story. This is another game with a shocking twist ending that I can't spoil for you here. It's actually something that makes you feel very small after essentially creating the earth and everything on it. I debated a very long time whether or not this would be my favorite game of all time, and there's only one aspect that edged it out of that covetted position: the final boss. If Quintet ever had a weak point it was their bosses. In ActRaiser, you had to deal with that boss rush, which was essentially filler. In Soul Blazer, the bosses were extremely and annoyingly hard to the point where it was surprising when you figured out what to do on your first life. This game's bosses were, for the most part, quite fair. And no, Bloody Mary didn't give me any problems. I actually beat her without getting hit. If you do your jump attack at just the right time, you'll hit her and slide just out of the reach of her attack range. The only boss that gave me any significant problem was the final boss. You know how many enemies have some sort of attack they'll do before they reveal their weakness? This boss slides his giant hand over the field in a wavy pattern a bunch of times. It's not hard to dodge, but he can do this over 30 times before he shows his weakness. And he's got a lot of fucking health too. It is one of the worst final bosses I've ever played. And you know what? The ending is actually worth beating him. A funny story. This game is actually considered the Europen Chrono Trigger, since that game was never released in PAL territories, while this game was never released in North American territories. And you know what, I think they got the better end of the deal if for no other reason than Chrono Trigger was eventually re-released world wide as a DS remake. This game is probably going to remain relatively unknown for a long time, unless someone like Chuggaaconroy let's plays it or someone very popular game reviewer gives it a good look. I mean, there a lot of underrated games that I love, like Battle Realms or Zombies Ate My Neighbors, but this one seems almost painful of how underrated it is. I'm sure a lot of people would say the same over something like EarthBound, but that game has always had an outstanding fan community. I don't even hear this game mentioned in passing. And now for some quick honorable mentions: * Age of Empires II (PC) – Best real time strategy game of all time. * Alter Ego (DOS) – It's something when a game can actually change your attitudes and behaviors in real life. * Battle Realms (PC) – One of the few strategy games that didn't feel like a rip-off of Age Empires and has a very unique theme. * Fallout 3 (Xbox 360) – Probably number 11 here to be totally honest. * Gauntlet Dark Legacy (Gamecube) – Fun gameplay, best Gauntlet game, best soundtrack in any video game ever * Intelligent Qube (PlayStation) – Favorite puzzle game. Has a soundtrack that belongs in a high-budget movie, like Jurassic Park. * Metal Slug (Arcade) – Highly fun and addictive gameplay. It's like Contra, except possible. * Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations (DS) – No duh. * Silent Hill 4 (Xbox) – I probably look way too deep into this game to like it this much. * Spyro Trilogy (PlayStation) – Spyro 1 was the first video game I ever played. Really fun, and each game was better than the last. * Stronghold (PC) – Building your own castles however you want is an absolute blast. * Suffering, The (Xbox) – This is the game, along with Condemned 2: Bloodshot, that Silent Hill Downpour ripped off extensively. * Super Mario Bros 3 (NES) – Favorite Mario game. Didn't make this list, unfortunately. * Survival Kids (GBC) – Randomized items, multiple endings, day and night cycle, a genre 10 years early, randomly generated weather. This is the most technically impressive game I've ever seen. * Unreal Tournament (PC) – Favorite FPS. Using Unreal Editor kept me addicted for months. * Viva Pinata (Xbox 360) – For those saying that Rare never made a good game after Conker... you're wrong. * Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Duel Academy (GBA) – Best Yu-Gi-Oh game ever. * Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES) – So much fun. Challenge I'm willing to play through. Number 1: Morrowind (Xbox) Yes, the PC version is better. I grew up with the Xbox version, so this is the one we're going with. Speaking of what may be technically better, I'm going to have to explain why I like Morrowind above Oblivion or Skyrim. To be totally honest, a lot of it is nostalgia. I mean, this is the one that I grew up with, and I played it at the right time to fall in love with it. I mean, if we're going on objectivism here, Morrowind provides a more creative world and more freedom than either Oblivion or Skyrim. I mean, for one, the start-to-slime ratio is much better here than in either of those two games. Get off the boat, create your character, take the ring, and give the paper to the guy. Two minutes and you've started a new game of Morrowind. No hour spent wandering around the sewers or on a prison cart. By minimizing the introduction stuff, you add replayability to the game. And Morrowind's story is just as involved as Oblivion's or Skyrim's. But here's the thing, I'm not really playing these games for their stories. I'm playing them to make my own story. Morrowind gives you the option to ignore the main quest altogether, while the other two don't really. These are huge worlds and I want to explore them. Every time I play, even Morrowind, I always find something new to do. I mean, it pretty much gives you a continent to explore. In reality, it's probably smaller than the state of Rhode Island, but it feels massive. I've challenged myself to making a full lap around the island without using fast travel to make sure. And no, I never found the lack of fast travel options annoying. Most of the important cities allow you to fast travel to them, and mark/recall are extremely useful. Even if I don't play a mage, I always use those spells. I liked Morrowind's world better than either Skyrim or Oblivion. Oblivion's felt very... stock. It was the typical fantasy setting that you'd see anywhere. It was definitely immersive with it and is extremely beautiful. I mean, exiting the sewers into Cyrodil for the first time is one of the most beautiful sights in a video game that I've seen, but it was largely Bethesda doing the typical extremely well, while Morrowind was them doing the atypical extremely well. As for Skyrim, this isn't a knock on the game, but I don't really like wintery environments. Also, I have seen Norse worlds before. Norse fantasy isn't as common as European fantasy granted, but I've still seen it before. I've never seen a world like Morrowind's before. It's almost ridiculous that Morrowind and Cyrodil exist on the game planet. Also not helping is that I liked Morrowind's glitches a lot more than either of them too. I mean in Oblivion, all you could really do was duplicate items. That could either make you rich, or flood your house with watermelons. Morrowind had the soul trap glitch. I love the soul trap glitch. For those unfamiliar, if you make a spell that increases an attribute by 100 with no time, and then give it the soul trap effect for two seconds, that buff just became permanent. You can cast this spell as many times as you want. Run across the country in the blink of an eye. Get a shop's entire stock for free and sell back a piece of garbage for all of their money. Create spells that are on the level of god powers. There are so many ways to mess with NPC's, especially if you're feeling sadistic—like shooting a ball of poison that keeps them paralyzed for days, turning everyone in town into statues. But you can have fun "legitimately" too. I mean, there are hundreds of hours of gameplay and that glitch just doubles it. Every so often though, you'll find an artifact or item that essentially gives you another new entirely new way to play the game. Anyone who is familiar with the game knows where I'm going with this: the Amulet of Shadows, possibly one of the most broken items in any game anywhere. It pretty much makes you invisible to everything for 60 seconds and has many charges. It won't stop you from getting your ass kicked, but it lets you steal anything you want or get away from a particularly dangerous enemy. And yes, I have beaten the game without it, thank you. I prefer playing with it. After that, I tend to go to another one of my favorite finds: a raw glass mine with no one guarding it but rats. These give me more ways to play, and no I don't go after them on every playthrough. Morrowind has so many ways to play and so much to do that I have not done everything in the game yet. The only guild I think I've done was Hlaalu to get the house, but normally what I do is freelance. Try to find my own treasure. Even 10 years after the game's release, I feel that there's something lost in the hills that can completely change my play style. And I'm talking about the game without mods, expansions, or console commands. There's no aspect to this game that I don't like. Even the cliffracers. From the music to the world to the atmosphere to the gameplay there isn't much for me not to like. I mean outdated mechanics and controls don't bother someone who grew up with them, and if restarting the same battle over and over again didn't bother me in Baldur's Gate, it's not going to bother me here. Next time, probably my top 10 least favorite/most hated live action movies. Category:Top Tens